The primary problem: persuading Republican voters to belief mail voting.
“With Dave’s management, we ended up doing focus teams, and the three issues that we thought that might get Republican voters to make use of mail-in ballots have been, No. 1, Trump saying it’s OK,” Mr. Reilly stated. “No. 2, convincing them that the navy had been voting on this approach endlessly. And No. 3, exhibiting them you can really monitor your vote and it might rely.”
Mr. Trump, for his half, despatched combined indicators. Within the early months of his candidacy, in 2023, he castigated mail voting and stated he wished “single-day voting,” a message many Republican voters took as a name to vote on Election Day.
However a few of Mr. Trump’s allies started to encourage him to alter his tune, at the least considerably.
“I labored onerous to, you understand, together with another individuals, to get him to endorse it, and he did,” stated Jim Worthington, a Republican donor and activist in Pennsylvania. “And that was key.”
By summer season, Mr. Trump was encouraging voters to solid early ballots, together with by mail, in a video message that was performed at rallies and on the Republican Nationwide Conference in Milwaukee.
His totally different strategy, nevertheless, was solely a part of the equation.
Republicans additionally wanted to construct a vote-by-mail operation primarily from scratch. Their effort in Pennsylvania started with a brilliant PAC based by Mr. McCormick properly earlier than he introduced his candidacy for the Senate, and finally grew to incorporate quite a few teams, together with the Sentinel Motion Fund, Keystone Renewal PAC and the Republican State Management Committee. They spent tens of millions of {dollars} to end up Republican mail voters, typically specializing in low-frequency voters. The McCormick and Trump campaigns additionally pushed Republicans to vote early.
